History (1993): Official Start of Seagate Disk Heads Plant in Northern Ireland

The new $65 million facility, at Springtown Industrial Park, Londonderry, Northern Ireland, will increase Seagate technology’s capacity, for producing thin-film recording heads for disk drives.

When completed, by the end of 1993, the new plant will provide enouqh of the wafers from which HDD recording heads are produced to make in excess of 100 million thin-film heads per year.

Anticipating that demand for its thin-film heads will increase to double that of recent levels by 2Q93, Seagate will use the Derry plan to complement existing fabrication operations in Minnesota and will increase production heads for its HDDs and for OEMs.

Construction of the plant is anticipated to be completed before the end of the year, with production output expected in early 1994.

Initial employment levels will be around 250, increasing to approximately 500 when the plant will be at full capacity.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 64, published on May 1993.

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“Enabling the factory to remain biggest producer of read-write heads in the world,” said the company.
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Note: In April 2020, Seagate Technology in Derry, which is one of the largest employers in the North-West with 1,400 staff, confirmed that one of their workers had tested positive for the Covid-19.